By Gretchen Teske
While the campus is asleep, the women’s lacrosse team is up and working hard. Their day starts with a 5:45 AM practice and follow up of either conditioning or weight lifting later in the day. Nearly twenty hours a week are devoted to making Concordia’s premiere women’s lacrosse team one to be remembered.
The lady cougars are led by Coach Brian Patterson, a Chicagoland native, with over ten years of experience. While Patterson himself has never played the sport, he is no stranger to coaching. With a background in football, track, and basketball, an opportunity to coach at his former high school, Marion Catholic, seemed like the perfect fit. He is looking forward to leading the team in their first year of lacrosse and expects big things from them.
When addressing the reason he chose to be the one to start a program here at Concordia, Patterson responded with, “We’re going to grow up together”. Because experience in this sport is lacking from the team of entirely new players, Coach Patterson’s first goal is to get through the season and give the team a new, positive, experience. Patterson thinks the hardest team the cougars will face this year will be Concordia Wisconsin, a team with six years of experience in the sport. His motto for the ladies is to, “put in work”. No matter what happens, Patterson just wants to see his team succeed in being the best they can be.
The team is made up of eighteen athletes whose experience in sports range from no experience to active athletes on other Concordia sports teams.
The team is made up of:
| Freshman | Sophomores | |||
| Maggie Doane* | Jessica Jaimes | |||
| Oralia Duarte | Kayla Walker | |||
| Emilie Russell | Sandra Acevedo | |||
| Patricia Gomez | Melissa Franco | |||
| Sydney Fuller | Anna Kellar | |||
| Cintia Garcia | ||||
| Seniors | ||||
| Juniors | Maggie Qualter* | |||
| Gretchen Teske | Jaya Joseph* | |||
| Sonja Sorensen | ||||
| Becca LaManna | ||||
| Emma Otto |
*indicates captain
Assistant Coach, Liz Blake, has been playing lacrosse since the sixth grade and is looking forward to watching the lady Cougars take the field. A Marilyn native, Blake has been very active in the sport as a participant as well as five years’ experience as a coach. She is looking forward to starting a new team here at Concordia because it is an excellent teaching experience as well a way to see passion and love for the game grow, as most of the team has never played lacrosse before. Her goal for the team is to exceed all expectations of critics, supporters, and most importantly, the players themselves. “I one hundred percent believe it is totally doable to do something so much better out here,” she explains.
The lady cougars will make history as the first women’s lacrosse team of Concordia University Chicago on their home field Saturday, February 27th verses Alma College. Game time is 12PM, rain, snow or shine. The team is excited to take the field and prove their hard work to bystanders and most importantly, themselves. They continue to keep a head held high as the preseason comes to an end with the motto, “keep moving forward”.
Photographs courtesy of Liz Blake
